


Bulletproof

by withered



Series: these violent delights [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Apathy, Character Study, Deathless characters, Depression, Everyone Needs Therapy, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied Violence, Not Steve Rogers Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 23:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18303710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withered/pseuds/withered
Summary: Tony keeps spitting out bullets.





	Bulletproof

 

Fear is something Tony learns young.

It’s the closest companion he knows.

In the heartbeat in his ears, the tightening in his chest, the cold sweat, the shaking; Tony knows fear as intimately as he knows anything else. And he’s assured, from the day he’d been dubbed a genius, built his own circuit board, fluently picked up his third-fourth-and-fifth language before he’d even turned seven that in fear, Tony would be a prodigy.

Because Tony has seen Death in every form it can take, has been a personification himself, but he’s never met them – not personally – even with his luck, lack thereof.

With every almost-death; every ‘fall’ he gets up from, every blow to the head that puts him to sleep, every would-be OD and every car crash, every kidnapping and terrorist threat and poisoning and _fucking alien invasion;_ the adrenaline of _almost, this time, it’s my time, it’s_ my _turn;_ fades, dulls.

He learns not to expect it, hope for it, look forward to it.

It makes visiting Edwin and Ana, his mother and Yinsen’s graves, unbearable.

It makes sitting in the dark, waiting for Jarvis to snark at him, hurt anew.

That he will outlive his loved ones.

That he will outlive even his creations.

The thought makes being alive unfathomably exhausting; the thought makes him feel unexplainably terrified.

And that’s the feeling that keeps him trying – to fight – to live – because if he can’t die then he’ll make living better, he’ll make earth safer – he’ll do something _good_ – all he has is time, and what should be a comfort to some, scares Tony the most.

He has time, and he doesn’t know why, he might never know.

The apathy comes slowly, like a cancer, growing like an inoperable tumour that is a mass of a perfect metaphor – useless and hollow and –

The result is similarly upsetting.  

Pepper thinks he’s being self-destructive, that he’s hurting himself on purpose, that he’s trying to die.

And she’s right.

Because the cells in his body might not degrade or fail or _stop producing_ , but he can. He can try. He keeps trying.

He just wants to know what the limits are – he just wants to know where the line is. He wants to know what it’ll take –

He’s terrified that there there’s nothing that he can’t – that there is no line to cross – no threshold to reach before he –

Fear curdles in his belly, and he embraces it.

If he’s afraid, he’s not apathetic.

If he’s afraid he won’t get careless and forget – he won’t worry Pepper or Happy or Harley or – because he’s learned to put in the effort to make it look like accidents – oversights – mistakes.

But Rhodey knows.

His Platypus has seen enough death in his lifetime, has seen it in the face of the living, _Rhodey knows_.

Bruce understands it better, _I put a bullet in my mouth and he spit it out._

 _Same,_ Tony thinks, _same._

It doesn’t stop him from putting in more bullets, doesn’t stop him from spitting them out. It’s a routine he follows as his therapist suggests; drink water, get some nutrition, stand in the sun, take a walk, save the world, save _someone,_ take a bullet to the head, get some sleep, rinse, repeat. He doesn’t tell her about the bullet, but the point still stands.

He’s trying. He is.

(Living and dying, both.)

Tony can’t help it, can’t do one without the other.

He needs to know – the hows, the whys, the _who_.

But he comes up short, and as a scientist, he’s frustrated, and as (A victim? A patient?) he is infuriated.

He knows the answer to this question.

He does.

But it’s out of his reach – a memory that’s been worn by time and altered by opinion.

And every time he lies, tells himself he doesn’t need to know – that it doesn’t matter – he peels back the scab, he watches it bleed, and he waits for the blood to slow; the skin knit, the wound to heal until it scabs again – and the cycle continues.

(His life, Tony’s learned, is a constant metaphor.

He’s some god’s idea of a practical joke; the never-ending story, the human groundhog-day: heal him, break him, do it again and again.)

His test results have nothing to compare it to, not even to Steve. Not that Steve is particularly sympathetic to his plight.

Steve’s been to war. He’s seen people die.

That Tony can’t, is unnatural.

That Tony might be like him, in some twisted way, is untenable.

Steve, it seems, has never learned to share the title of being a scientific marvel, but at least it isn’t information he gives away.

Instead, the great Captain America hordes it, keeps it close to his chest until the day he too can put it to the test:  What are two gods, what is an alien army, what is _anything_ against a pair of determined Super Soldiers?

Tony has seen what Barnes can do, has felt it in the arc reactor the Super Soldier tried to pry out of Tony’s chest; heard the thumps of his heart run away from him as Tony watched the way Barnes’ eyes burn fever bright while his expression pleas, _I’m sorry, I don’t want to do this, I can’t make it stop it, I can’t undo it, **I can’t make it stop** –_

That day in the Bunker, Tony felt Barnes’ clawing need to survive in every swipe and punch the Winter Soldier had thrown his way, had felt every desperate grapple Barnes pulled at with nails to the concrete as he clutched on tight to the dwindling control he’d managed to find outside of Hydra.

Tony saw it in Barnes’ eyes, remembered the sheer terror when faced with the murder of Tony’s parents.

_I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry – I’m sorry –_

It’s visceral and violent and raw, the air is thick with a tension that vibrates with anguish, and grows wet with blood, and it’s the most potent thing Tony’s ever experienced that wasn’t the pain and guilt wrought by his own hand.

Barnes’ corruption and reforming is so familiar to Tony’s own shaking and breaking, that he feels breathless with it, and not just because he’s pretty sure his lung is on the verge of collapse.

(Though it probably is.)

And he’s glad for the first time in a long time, that on that day, while he watches his parents die, that Tony doesn’t follow.

Not that he can, or ever could.

Because the questions that have kept him up from the day he realized he couldn’t die to the day he’d searched for meaning in _why_ keeps his blood burning.   

(He almost thanks Rogers for it. Almost.)

When the time comes that Tony gets his hands on Barnes, it is a time that Tony gets to test his own theories:

With Bruce beside him, they run every test imaginable; aiming to establish baselines for strength, speed, durability and healing; coming up with where the lines converge between the differences of Erksine’s serum and Hydra’s; and trying to pinpoint where the conditioning started and where Bucky began.

Tony watches in horrified fascination how Barnes blows through them all, casually destroying Rogers’ initial readings out of the water, and placing Barnes at the highest tier they had for currently enhanced beings, bar Peter.

Barnes might not have been bitten by a radioactive spider, but if anyone wanted to kill Barnes, _good luck to ‘em, the man’s practically unkillable._

It’s a conclusion that is met with a placid look of resignation, and well – that’s something Tony had only ever seen in his own reflection.

He pulls up his own file when Bruce excuses himself – green tinge beneath his skin over the level of torture that had been theoretically required to make Barnes possible and – he stares, and doesn’t breathe – and just _can’t_ because –

“It was him.”

Tony’s focus shatters, his hands tighten.

“Howard,” Barnes croaks, his voice breaking; sentences coming and going in starts and stops, “I remembered – I remembered him. That’s why I broke – why I didn’t follow orders that night. That’s why there was a video.

“My father was -”

_“You are my greatest creation.”_

He blinks, surprised that he isn’t surprised at all.

Of course, it was Howard.

Of course, it was.

The discovery isn’t an epiphany, it doesn’t fix what is broken (it doesn’t fix Tony, perhaps it even does the opposite); it does nothing for Tony at all except turn his soul to stone and set it to sink at the essence of his existence.

In the quiet that settles, pregnant with potential for a breaking of some kind, Barnes murmurs, vehemently calm, “I’m not sorry about Howard.”

He knows fear. He knows death.

Thanks to Howard, Barnes does too.

He sighs.

Tony should have known.

 “Neither am I.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Click here if you want to find out more about my work](https://everything-withered.tumblr.com/)


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